5 things that are huge in China, but not U.S.

Products that are huge in China that Americans think are “meh.”

You know where kids today don’t hang out? The mall. Well, unless they live in China. In the U.S., the mall is on the decline: There have been no new enclosed malls built since 2006, and there’s even a website — DeadMalls.com — devoted to shuttered malls. By some estimates, 15% of the malls that are still open will be closed or converted into non-retail space in the next decade. But in China, developers can scarcely build malls fast enough. Indeed, as of last year, roughly half of the 344 million square feet of shopping centers being built around the globe were in China, according to one estimate.

Here in the U.S., many see Buicks as the kind of car one tools around a retirement home parking lot in (and indeed the average buyer is around 60-years-old, according to some estimates). But the Chinese see Buicks as stylish luxury cars. “They’re considered really high end in China,” says Deb Weidenhamer, founder and CEO of iPai, an auction house in China. They’re also quite popular there. Buick is one of the market leaders in China with 810,000 Buicks sold in the country last year, while here in the U.S., despite a small uptick in popularity, only about 200,000 Buicks were sold.

Bloomberg News

Slide 3 of 6

Mink coats

The mink coat in America tends to be the purview of overly perfumed and coiffed grandmas, but in China, many middle class consumers are all about mink. From 2008 to 2013, wholesale mink prices nearly tripled, a trend analysts attribute in part to the high prices that the Chinese middle class — who are clamoring for high-end fashion and status symbols — will pay for them. Indeed, Chinese mink demand is so strong that a warm winter in China helped send prices plummeting almost 40% . The next cold winter, however, will likely make those mink prices rise again.

Bloomberg News

Slide 4 of 6

KFC

It’s not that we’re not fans of the Colonel here in the States, but we’ve got nothing on China’s love of fast-food chicken. Kentucky Fried Chicken is the largest fast-food chain in China in terms of annual sales ($6.8 billion in 2012), according to Euromonitor data (it also operates 4,600 stores); meanwhile, in the U.S., it is only the eighth largest chain with $4.5 billion in sales and has been falling in the rankings (back in 2008 it was the sixth largest), according to Euromonitor. David Jang, lead analyst for IBISWorld, points out that Yum!
YUM, -0.87%
, which owns KFC, has 41.2% of the fast-food market in China while McDonald’s, the second largest player, only has about 13%. Meanwhile, in the U.S., “Chick Fil A recently surpassed KFC as the most popular fast-food chicken place,” he says. “That’s not true in China.”

Bloomberg News

Slide 5 of 6

Mary Kay cosmetics

“Mary Kay was big in the U.S. in the 60s, 70s, 80s,” says Steve Papermaster, the CEO of venture development firm Powershift Group. And while it’s still well-known and doing business here, the Chinese market is going particularly ga-ga for the cosmetics company, he says. Indeed, the company, which first entered the Chinese market in 1995, has seen sales in China rise 64-fold in the last 15 years, according to its website; meanwhile, many of its cosmetics rivals are pulling some of their brands out of the market. Its popularity is so great in China now that it is considering an office building in Shanghai. A spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal that “because of the growth we’ve experienced in China and in many of our other markets around the world, we constantly evaluate our facilities and offices to make sure we have the right resources to sustain our growth.”

Intraday Data provided by SIX Financial Information and subject to terms of use.
Historical and current end-of-day data provided by SIX Financial Information. Intraday data
delayed per exchange requirements. S&P/Dow Jones Indices (SM) from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
All quotes are in local exchange time. Real time last sale data provided by NASDAQ. More
information on NASDAQ traded symbols and their current financial status. Intraday
data delayed 15 minutes for Nasdaq, and 20 minutes for other exchanges. S&P/Dow Jones Indices (SM)
from Dow Jones & Company, Inc. SEHK intraday data is provided by SIX Financial Information and is
at least 60-minutes delayed. All quotes are in local exchange time.